Omar Baboon suggests replacing tablet time with activities that actually hook kids: library books (you can check out 20 at once), painting, board games, four square, biking, and skateboarding. Just cutting screen time doesn't work; kids need something better to do instead.
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Up to 20 books.
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Hey guys, Omar Baboon here with Better With Betsy and just want to talk to you guys about something I see pretty much every day and I'm sure something that you deal with all the screen time. We see our kids obsessed and just really cannot get over the idea of finding other ways to entertain themselves other than staring at a computer, a cell phone, whatever it may be. And that's one thing that I'm sure is driving you crazy. And one thing that I would love to help you with is how to do that. Yeah, it's very easy to say, okay, that's it, no more screen time. And you cut them off. But a kid's still going to be looking for something, something to entertain their young little minds and get them interested. So instead of just cutting it off, you actually have to find something that's going to hook them, something that's going to buy their time. So one of the options I can give you is books. I mean, that's one of the easiest we can go to and it's something that a child can do on their own and it's going to be something that they can take with them forever. It's hard to find, you know, a book for a kid to get into if they've never really found their passion. So one of the easiest things you can do is take a one day outing to your public library and just find, you know, a few books. You can check out up to 20 different books at one time and your child can just kind of knit and pick and kind of go through them and see which one's going to work for them. Something else we can get into is painting again, something that they can do on their own and something that I know a lot of little kids get into and trust me, a lot of adults still do. We doodle, we write in corners of papers, we do a lot of stuff that kind of just buys our time and we could turn that into an activity. So if you, you know, if you only have crayons, start with those colored pencils. Something that's going to get their interest and give them a topic that you want to see a painting of. Whatever it may be, it may spark an interest and give them something to do for, you know, 20 minutes to like an hour after painting. There's a few things that we start need to look outside. The weather right now is beautiful and it's something that you should be taking advantage of. Another option that you have is four square. Now you don't need four people to play. You can literally just draw Two boxes on the ground, and all you need is a nice bouncy softball. Okay? The rules are simple. It's just like tennis. It's just like ping pong, but you stand in the middle and you try to bounce the ball into each other's boxes. Very simple. Gets you outside and gets you moving for a little bit without having to run to the other side of the world. So you won't have to worry about getting winded. But have a little fun with your kid, okay? Keeping outside, riding a bike, skateboarding, you know, anything that you're going to do that's active, that shows that your child is getting up and out of the couch, is anything that's positive, okay? Once you start doing it with them, they're going to want to do it on their own. And that's what we want. We want to find their interests. That that's going to keep them occupied, keep their brain working physically as well as mentally. So just to recap, there's a few things that you can do to limit screen time. Indoors. You got painting, you got books, and don't forget my favorite board games. Okay? Outdoors, you have Foursquare, you have riding a bike, skateboarding, kicking a ball around. Those are just a few things to get your mind rolling to try and limit that screen time. So I hope these tips help. So I'll see you guys outside.
